Vice & Virtue
by singsongsung
Summary: Nate. Serena. Chuck. Blair. Deadly sins. Heavenly virtues. Somewhere along the line they all fell in love.
1. Avaritia

**A/N:** Alright. So, this is going to be 15 chapters long, which will cover all seven deadly sins, all seven heavenly virtues, and an epilogue. Some chapters will be longer, some will be shorter; some will take place over the course of about an hour like this one does, some will stretch out over years. All pairings between these four are going to be explored (N/B, C/B, N/S, C/S, C/N, S/B). I've been toying with the idea of an NSCB fic for quite a while, and I'm pretty thrilled with this idea. Enjoy and please review.

**Avaritia**

_The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality._

_-- Marya Mannes_

"Who's that?" He doesn't mean to growl out the question, territorial and menacing, but it's how it leaves his lip. His girlfriend is shocked, he can tell by the way her shoulders jump up momentarily and her eyebrows arch.

In an instant, her facial expression is neutral and calm, and she's laying a hand lightly on his knee. "Who, sweetie?"

"The guy she's…hanging off of," he mutters, disgusted as he watches on.

She rolls her eyes and shrugs blithely. "He's on the lacrosse team," she supplies vaguely, desperately trying to pretend she wasn't noticed mixture of concern and jealously in her boyfriend's eyes. He is _hers_. They've been together, or approaching togetherness, since childhood. They'll get married one day, live on Park Avenue, have beautiful children. He doesn't need to look at any other girl.

But then, of course, she supposes this is the one girl she should allow him to feel protective over. This is the one girl who's never supposed to be a threat, and yet is _always_ a threat. She drums her perfectly manicured nails against the tabletop in a steady, calming pattern, a predictable succession of sounds.

"Shouldn't we go get her?" her boyfriend asks, his voice dangerously low.

"I suppose we should," she mutters. She pulls her hand back, putting an abrupt end to the rhythm, and stands, dropping her napkin demurely on her chair. "Come on, darling," she adds, slipping her hand into his and pulling him after her.

He frowns at the way she moves across the room, tugging him along, as if this whole rescue mission was her generous idea in the first place. He watches her shoot smiles at all the right people at all the right moments, and he hates her and loves her so much in that moment.

"Hey," she says authoritatively, but with infinite politesse and sweetness. "I think you're kind of wearing my best friend right now. Mind if I take her back?" Without waiting for a reply, she gently takes both of Serena's arms and pulls her away.

"_Blair_!" she intoxicated blonde says brightly, wrapping her arms around her friend's neck in an enthusiastic hug. She touches Blair's cheek tenderly and grins. "Hi."

"Hi," Blair replies with a long-suffering sigh that makes her boyfriend chuckle.

Serena squints at her worriedly. "Did you _eat_?"

"S.," the brunette warns her quietly with a small shake of her head. She is so lovable yet so irritating all at once, entirely concerned but too drunk to realize that this is not the place or time. She grimaces and turns to Nate. "I _have_ to stay here, my committee is throwing this luncheon." She bites her lip as she steadies Serena, shooting him a pleading look. "Will you look after her? Take her to bathroom, try and get her to drink some coffee? It shouldn't be more than an hour."

"Natie!" Serena cries joyously as if she's just noticed him.

"Hey, you," he says gently as Blair transfers her into his arms and shoots him a grateful glance. She kisses his cheek and gives him a promising look before she bolts off to play hostess.

"Blair looks pretty," Serena says contemplatively as she tucks her head against his shoulder. "_You_ look pretty," she adds as an afterthought.

Nate laughs as he guides her from the room. "I'm not entirely sure that's a compliment. But thank you, nonetheless." He sighs as he directs her into the restaurant's spacious, single washroom, helping her to sit on the counter by the sink. He plants a hand on either side of her body, leaning toward her. "How much did you have to drink? Do you _remember_ what you drank?"

"Does it matter?" she asks as she shrugs.

"Kinda, yeah," he laughs.

She suddenly becomes very involved with studying her fingernails. "It's what I've done. It's what I do. It doesn't matter."

"Serena, of course it does."

She shakes her head, blonde hair flying. "You have Blair and Blair has you. You want each other. And I just want you both. It doesn't matter."

"Serena…" he says mournfully, tucking blonde wisps behind her perfect ears. "You matter so much to both of us." He wishes Blair was here because she'd know what the right thing to say would be. He's also very glad she's not. "We want you, too."

And when she kisses him he doesn't pull away.

xoxo

She tastes like champagne and cigarettes, watermelon and grief, like something very familiar. This happens sometimes. It just _happens_, him and her; they fall into each other and they don't let go.

When they pull apart for oxygen they don't meet each other's eyes. He stands there in the same position breathing heavily, trying to think of something smart to say, and she's crying.

"Well, well."

Nate spins around to see his best friend watching them knowingly, his ever-present smirk in place. Chuck walks over to them and throws his joint into the sink.

"What do we have here?"

Serena fidgets uncomfortably, her pointy-toed heels hitting Nate's knees. "I want to go home," she declares, evading Chuck's question even in her inebriated state.

Chuck just continues to smirk. Serena and Nate in a compromising situation, a situation that indicates much more than friendship…it ceases to surprise him any more. It never really surprised him.

It irks him, however. He gets everything he wants, no questions asked, he always has. He could have any girl, and he's _had_ most of them. He's the daring one, the wild one, the dangerous one. And yet, Nate's the one both of these girls have fallen for. Serena, his equal in rebelliousness and spirit, has never been willing to give him what he wants for her.

He stands at her side and brushes her hair back, off of her neck, and presses his lips to the spot just under her ear. "_Darling_," he murmurs only because he knows how much it bothers her when he uses affection terms with her. She squirms away from him, casting a frown in his direction, and their eyes meet, a bolt of electric understanding passing between them. They are so similar. "I could take you home," he adds.

Nate pushes Chuck away, his jaw clenching with jealousy. "Would you just go and make sure that Blair's not having a meltdown out there?"

Chuck laughs casually. "Whatever you say, Nathaniel," he placates his friend, turning to go. Before he steps away Serena grasps his hand and gives it a second-long squeeze before letting go as if nothing ever happened. He winks at her and ambles away.

"You shouldn't drink so much," Nate says when he's gone, stupidly lashing out at her for things that he feels.

"You shouldn't be with Blair," she rebukes, utter honestly, and they sit there in silence again, just breathing and crying.

xoxo

Inside the room, Chuck leans against a wall, watching Blair move about. She's seen him; she knows he's there if she needs any assistance of any kind. She has everything under control. If there's anything Blair's knowledgeable in, it's control. She's perfection, the Upper East Side's princess, the only other girl he hasn't had. She's too pure, too demure, too fixated on movie script, fairytale endings. He could give her that, but he could also give her so much more, if she'd let him.

The thing is, she probably never will. The other thing is, that only increases his want for her.

She sidles up to him wearing a tired but satisfied smile. "Can I help you, Bass?"

"Your best friend is in the bathroom with your boyfriend, and I think it would be in her best interest and yours to get them out of there in the near future."

She throws him a startled glance. "What's that supposed to mean?" she inquires edgily.

His hand slides easily down in the space between them, his finger hooking just under the hem of her skirt. "You know what it means, Waldorf."

"He's my boyfriend. She's my best friend." Separate entities, separate people, separate realms of her life. But most importantly, she's saying _mine_. They both belong to her, not to one another.

Chuck leans a bit closer to her. His fingers are touching her thigh. "And I? What am I?"

She pulls away, grasping his hand and yanking it away from her body. "You…are our ride home," she says dismissively, turning to go find the wayward blondes.

"Waldorf!" he calls after her, and she turns to look at him, arching her eyebrows impatiently. He smirks. "Every time you turn me down I only want you more."

"Please," she scoffs, but her voice is soft, and her ankles are weak when she struts away.

xoxo

Blair sits in the middle in the back of Chuck's limo and she thinks it's ironic. Serena is asleep, sprawled out across their laps, her head resting on Nate's thighs. Blair rests her head against Chuck's shoulder just because. She's tired. It's not revenge or anything.

Chuck knows that he's greedy. It's how he's always been, more take than give, and shamelessly so. And he wants to take: Blair's virginity. Serena's turbulent beauty. Nate's girls.

Nate can't choose. He wants the best of both worlds. He's got connections to them both, Blair and Serena, on every level. He can't remember when he fell in love with them. It doesn't matter who he loved first. All that matters is that he loves them both and he can't comprehend his world without either of them.

Blair, for her part, is greedy for the past, when it was easier and when it was all defined. She wants to shop, to buy uber-expensive shoes and bags, and eat sushi and drink martinis, love Nate, giggle with Serena, plot with Chuck. She's hungry for the simplicity of it all, the easiness of knowing exactly how much she needed to love everyone (_Nate, forever; Serena, a lot at most times; Chuck, not at all_).

And Serena, for her part, eyelashes fluttering over her blue orbs, dreams restlessly of everything she wants and everything she doesn't have.

Nathaniel. Serena. Charles. Blair.

They want each other more than they should; it's only a matter of time until they crash and burn.


	2. Humanitas

**A/N: **Thank you for your reviews. :) All of this story takes place pre-pilot, just in case I haven't made that clear. Enjoy.

**Humanitas**

_Sometimes someone says something really small, and it just fits right into this empty place in your heart._

_-- from "My So-Called Life"_

"S."

Serena blinks at her doorway like she's seeing things. "Chuck?" she asks in a small voice, lifting her head from her cocoon of blankets.

"What're you doing?" he asks as he wanders over to her bed, covered in a blue comforter quite similar to the shade of the ocean. Serena insisted on redecorating her bedroom last year, when she was five, already tired of the pinks and white Lily picked out for her.

"Hiding," she says mutedly.

"Yeah," he replies simply, understandingly, noticing when he's closer to the bed that her little brother is napping at her side. "Do you think I can I hide with you?"

She looks at him for a long moment before she nods hesitantly, lifting the blankets so that he can crawl in at her side.

As he settles in next to her, his body pressed close, his hand finds hers under the blankets and she hangs on tight, their palms clammy. Whispering to avoid waking Erik, she asks, "Why aren't you at home?"

"My dad is in China," he informs her, offering an explanation for disappearing from his own home on Father's Day.

"Oh," she says quietly, blinking hard, because at least he _knows_ where his dad is.

Chuck peeks at her in his peripheral vision, noting the tears shining in her pretty eyes. "Are you okay?" he asks her without looking right at her.

She blinks rapidly, a single tear escaping and trailing down her sun-freckled cheek. "Better now," she murmurs just as the door to her bedroom opens once more, causing both six-year-olds to sit up and see who the intruder is.

Nate stands in the doorway, hands shoved in the pocket of his hooded sweater. Shrugging bashfully, he smiles sheepishly at his friends. "Hey," he says.

Serena's lips curl into a gentle smile for what feels like the first time all day. "Come here," she replies. She can't help the quiet giggles that escape her lips as Nate lies down on the other side of Erik, so that her little brother is sandwiched between them.

"Why aren't _you_ at home?" Chuck inquires from the other side of her, still holding her hand.

He shrugs, meeting Serena's eyes over Erik's head. "My dad cares about a lot of things more than me."

Chuck and Serena understand each other perfectly in that moment, so they let the words sink in around them, and she revels the feeling of being with all the boys in her life who matter most on this day, even if the most important one left her to go who-knows-where to do who-knows what. She decides in that moment that the people she's lying with now, who are here when she needs them, will be the _most_ important people in her life from now on.

…plus one more, who marches through the door at that moment with more authority than a child of her age should have.

"Blair?" she whispers.

Her best friend crawls across the bed and nudges Chuck's body a little bit closer to Serena's so that she can cuddle in as well.

"What are you doing here?" Nate hisses from the other side of the bed. "It's Father's Day."

Blair settles in, brown hair fanned across the pillow. "Daddy dropped me off." She smiles sweetly at Serena, her eyes soft in that way she reserves for the people she loves most. "You guys are important, too."

xoxo

"Hey, B.," she says softly, rapping her knuckles lightly against the door. "Can I come in?"

"_No_," comes Blair's fierce reply, so Serena waits a moment so that her friend doesn't feel as though her authority's been entirely undermined before she barges into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind her.

From her position on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest, Blair looks up at Serena with a vulnerability the blonde knows very few people ever get to see. Serena sighs sadly as she regards her friend; Blair looks very thin and relatively miserable.

Even though Serena's towering over her, the brunette somehow manages to look down her nose at her best friend as she takes in her best friend's appearance: vibrant pink trenchcoat-style jacket over a silvery dress, wearing those flat brown boots she loves so damn much, haphazard hair, eyeliner smudged, and still miraculously beautiful. "You're a _mess_," she sneers, more cruelly than Serena deserves, but both girls laugh weakly at the irony of her statement nonetheless.

"Look who's talking," Serena says tenderly, dropping her purse and curling up on the floor at Blair's side, wrapping an arm around the brunette's shoulders. "Can you talk to me about this, B.?"

She shakes her head, whispering, "There's nothing to say." After she swallows hard, she meets Serena's eyes. "I thought you were partying with Georgina tonight."

"I was," the blonde agrees, and it's at that moment that Blair catches a whiff of alcohol of Serena's breath and it makes her gag.

"You're _twelve_," she says sternly, her brown eyes flashing.

Serena smirks and shrugs in that winning way of hers. "Boys think I'm at least fifteen, and bartenders don't care."

"Yeah, 'cause of your boobs," Blair shoots back.

Her jaw drops but she laughs. "Whatever works."

Frowning, Blair shakes her head. "Why are you here, with me, now? Why aren't you busy getting to third base with some guy at some bar?"

Serena scrunches up her nose adorably. "B., do you know what third base _is_?"

Blair scowls, but not meanly. "Just because Nate and I have never gotten that far doesn't mean I don't _know_."

"Mmkay," Serena singsongs, but her eyes are sombre. "Blair…listen, I'm worried about you."

Blair stares down at the tiled floor of her bathroom. "I can't help it," she whispers. "I'm…I'm not like you."

Pursing her lips, Serena asks quietly, "What does that mean?"

"It means…look at you!" Blair cries, her eyes full. This is the one side of herself she never lets even her best friend see because that's how ashamed of it she is. "You're wearing those stupid flat brown boots and everything clashes and you're tipsy and your make-ups screwed up, but bartenders still serve you drinks and boys will still go to bases with you because you're perfect, no matter what. I'm…I'm not _like_ that. I'm…"

"Blair," she says mutedly, "I'm not perfect at all. And you're beautiful."

"Only because I do this." She gnaws on her lower lip. She wonders if Serena really _knows_, about the way Nate looks at her rather than Blair, or the way her parents seem so tense with each other sometimes, or the way she's so sure her mother would pay more attention to her if she were more like Serena.

"_No_," Serena insists, "for a million other reasons. And life isn't just about how you _look_, B."

"You can say stupid things like that because you're _you_," Blair retorts, licking her dry lips. Serena immediately reaches for her purse and pulls out a tub of lip balm. "Thank you," she mutters as she accepts it.

"I'm not saying stupid things," the blonde says quietly, "I'm saying _true_ things. Blair, I think maybe…you should talk to someone, you know? Tell your mom, and –"

"My mom has never even _noticed_," Blair cuts her off, her voice thick, "And there is no way I'm going to tell her that I'm…" She grimaces. _Bulimic_ is such an unpleasant word.

"Okay," Serena says easily, because she can make anything easy. "Then we'll figure it out ourselves. But you need to talk to somebody, B."

"How is that figuring it out ourselves? That's you getting someone else to fix me."

"You don't need _fixing_," Serena replies firmly, "You just need to talk to someone who can help you through this. I love you, Blair, but this is over my head. You understand, right?"

Blair shakes her head stubbornly, thoroughly annoyed with her friend. "You just want to throw my issues at someone else so you can go back to Georgina."

"Don't be stupid," Serena chides her. "I'd give up hanging out with Georgie for you any day. You're my best friend, Blair. My sister."

"Except you wouldn't, and I'm not. You like her better because she's fun. You'd rather have fun than worry about me. I don't even know how you realized that I needed…somebody…tonight," she finishes roughly, unwilling to admit that Serena is the exact person she needs with her right now.

She clears her throat awkwardly. "Um…Chuck came and picked me up. He drove me over here."

Blair stares at her, aghast. "_Chuck Bass?_"

Serena's eyebrows fly up. "C'mon, B., do you know another Chuck?"

"Oh, God," the brunette groans, humiliation seeping in as she buries her face in her hands. "Does _everybody _know?"

"No. Blair, no, of course not. We've – Nate and I and Chuck – we've worried about you for a little while now, but we were never sure what to do. Tonight Chuck said that someone had to get through to you, and he said you'd probably like it more if it was me and not him."

"And what about Nate?" Blair inquires, almost hopefully.

Serena shrugs, trying to be neutral. "I haven't talked to him tonight."

Blair is trembling. "You know things are messed up when Chuck notices something that Nate doesn't."

"B., he just –"

She shakes her head and the words die on Serena's lips. "It's…it's stupid, isn't it?" she whispers. "That we can let a boy do this to us. Me with my, um…stress-induced regurgitation," she finally says decidedly, "and you with your Georgina and parties and other boys. It's stupid, right? That we both want Nate to see us so bad."

Struck speechless and having been made completely transparent in that moment, Serena has to swallow hard over the lump in her throat before her blue eyes finally meet Blair's brown ones. "Yeah," she finally manages to get out, and lets Blair sink into her arms, resting her cheek against her best friend's soft, wavy hair.

"You know…" she whispers, "Chuck notices."

"Sure, he sees us," Blair agrees in a small voice, taking minimal comfort in this fact.

Serena pushes her jealousy away, wondering if either of the boys in her life will ever put her first. "No, B., I think he sees _you_." She sighs, wrapping Blair up even tighter in her arms. "Promise me you'll get some help. Promise me you'll let me help you."

Blair sighs as well, squeezing her eyes shut. "I promise."

xoxo

"Hey, boys," Serena giggles as she drops down onto the blanket in the middle of Sheep Meadow with Nate and Chuck, letting her long legs fall across Nate's lap and shooting him a sympathetic look.

Blair sits down primly in between the boys, her body curved toward Nate's, frowning at Serena's legs over his as she rests her head against his shoulder. "Hey, sweetie. How are you?" she asks him.

"M'fine," he mutters, giving her forehead a quick kiss before he returns his attention to the blades of grass he's picking at.

"Your family shouldn't be able to bully you like that, Natie," Serena tells him softly. "You should be able to do whatever you want to do with your life."

He looks at her sadly. She can say that, because she's Serena, and even when there are consequences in her life, she ignores them.

"I don't have any say in my own life," he says morosely with a long-suffering sigh. His father is so set on his future and his mother's a doormat: she agrees with any plan.

All three of his friends exchange worried glances and open their mouths to speak, but Nate just clenches his jaw and shakes his head.

"Let's just sit here for a while," he says, accepting a joint from Chuck as he enjoys the feeling of Blair curled into his side and Serena's long legs flung over his.

xoxo

One day each year, Chuck opens a door – to his house, his own personal suite at the Palace, or maybe even to his limo – and the three people closest to him in the world pile in, his little family. He smirks and smarms and they laugh at him and the girls squeal about how he grosses them out and Nate rolls his eyes, and Blair insists they watch _Breakfast at Tiffany's_, and he rolls his eyes and complains about missing a night he could be spending out in the world, picking up girls, but when they all drift to sleep crowded around him, he can't help but love them – as much as Chuck Bass ever loves – for not forgetting the anniversary of his mother's death.

xoxo

He paces the corridor of the hospital, breathing deeply. He rarely feels overwhelmed, but now is one of those moments when he definitely does. He's experienced life beyond his young age of fourteen, but in reality he's still a kid, and he's in over his head.

Blair and Nate come barrelling down the hallway toward him, hands clasped and footsteps in sync, and he's never been so relieved to see the Upper East Side's golden couple in his life. Nate's facial expression alone pretty much says _oh my god_ and Blair's eyes are glassy with tears.

She reaches for his hand as well, hanging on tight. "Is she okay?"

Chuck shrugs, trying to stay neutral and unaffected, trying not to betray the panic inside. "I don't really know yet."

"Fuck," Nate mutters, and Blair shoots him her best appalled look for a moment, only until she realizes that the situation deserves it.

Blair's hand is shaking within his, and Chuck clutches it just a little bit tighter, and he knows when she clings back that she doesn't care about his sweaty palms. He coats through his life, money and liquor and girls, already jaded, but this is cracking his façade, reaching for his heart.

A young nurse approaches them, and he thinks _she's hot _for a split second before Blair squeezes his hand, hard.

"Is Serena van der Woodsen's family here?"

Blair gets that icy, strong-willed look in her eyes and drops both boys' hands, planting her hands on her hips and lifting her chin imperiously. Nate admires the way she takes control of the situation, Chuck finds himself simply admiring her. Blair Waldorf has more to her than he's realized yet.

"I'm her sister," she says bluntly, staring the nurse down with her fourteen-year-old eyes, daring the older woman to contradict her.

She sizes Blair up and then finally clears her throat, glancing down at the chart she holds. "We had to pump her stomach, but she should be perfectly fine. Your…_sister_ is a lucky girl. She should think very carefully about the way she's been living her life."

Chuck won't put up with criticism of Serena's lifestyle because it's roughly the same as criticism of his own. "Is she awake?"

The nurse shakes her head. "She's going to be very tired for the next couple days, and her throat will be very sore. We'll keep her overnight, and probably tomorrow, too, for observation. We've got her on painkillers right now, and…_your parents_," she adds to Blair sceptically, "might want to explore options of psychiatric –" Blair's eyes flash dangerously and the nurse stops short, clearing her throat nervously. "That's…that's all."

"Can we see her?"

"It's past visiting hours."

Blair grits her teeth, blinking back tears. "Someone needs to be there when she wakes up."

After a brief staring contest, the nurse backs down, but frowns and shakes her head when Blair reaches for Nate and Chuck's hands again. "Family only," she insists sternly.

The brunette brushes by her without a second glance, singing out, "They're cousins!"

They stop short in the doorway of Serena's hospital room and let go of each other's hands, exchanging apprehensive glances. Nate somehow summons up some courage and takes the first steps in, sinking into the chair at her side. He places his sweaty hand atop hers, uncharacteristically pale. Carefully, he slips each of his fingers through hers, weaving them together. Serena is normally so _unbreakable_. He's scared, and his fear translates quickly into anger as he finds himself glaring at his best friend across the room. "What _happened_?" he demands. "You should have taken care of her."

Chuck shakes his head: part of him agrees but another part of him knows that he shouldn't be held responsible for Serena's actions. "You're the knight in shining armour, Nathaniel," he says tiredly, eyeing Serena's body worriedly. "Not me. I can't be the good guy."

Serena stirs, her fingers gripping Nate's slightly, and Blair finds her strength and bolts across the room to perch on the edge of the bed.

"S?" Blair asks tenderly, smoothing Serena's hair out of her face.

She blinks until her world comes into focus, and manages to say, "Hi," even though her throat is dry and achy. Nate's hand feels warm and secure holding onto hers, but she searches for Chuck's eyes first. "Sorry…" She takes a pause to breath. "If I ruined your night."

His lips twist as he leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, something tugging at his heart, because he has to admit that she's more important than his night was. "Sorry that I let you," he replies, trying to smirk at her but hoping that she understands.

"Are you okay?" Blair asks eagerly, eyes sparkling. "Do you want some water?"

She nods and lets Blair hold a straw to her lips, shooting her friend the best apologetic glance she can muster up. As she settles back against her pillows wearily, Nate lifts her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles.

"I'm _so glad_ you're okay," he whispers fiercely against her skin, his blue eyes stormy and intense.

"Do you know where your mom is?" Blair asks delicately, her heart aching on Serena's behalf, because maybe they're more alike than she thought, maybe they're both searching for attention in harmful ways after all.

Serena shakes her head slightly, eyelids fluttering closed. Nate watches her with something close to reverence while Chuck's eyes dart back and forth between Blair and Nate.

"Okay," Blair whispers, running her fingers through Serena's tangled, matted hair. "I'll call Erik in the morning, he can come visit you."

"He might know where to reach Lily," Chuck adds, even though it's a long shot.

"No," Serena murmurs, blue eyes opening wide. "I don't want him to come here. I don't want to scare him."

Blair's throat gets very tight as she clenches her teeth, never tearing her gaze away from Serena. "You don't want to scare him," she repeats, the threat of tears evident in her voice. "But you're okay with scaring us?"

"B…" Serena murmurs regretfully.

"Blair, let her sleep," Nate intervenes.

"Let her answer," Chuck tells him, gently but firmly.

"Of course I don't…I don't mean to scare you. I'm sorry."

Blair's hand balls into a fist, perfectly manicured fingernails digging into her palm. "S., you can't do this. You can't do it to us and you can't do it to _yourself_. Okay? You need to be careful. Promise me," she says very solemnly, "Promise me you'll be more careful. Promise me you'll let me help you," she adds quietly, her eyes locked with Serena's hazy blue orbs.

"I promise I won't ever do this to you again," she says very seriously, her gaze drifting over to Chuck and then to Nate, appealing to him with her eyes.

Blair's not sure that that's good enough of a promise, because it's only really half of what she asked for, but it's too late to demand anything more because Serena's drained and her partying has finally caught up with her, and Nate's busy kissing the blonde's forehead, and so Blair sighs and reaches out for a hug, throwing a pointed look to Chuck over her shoulder.

He walks over to the slowly, crawling onto the single bed with his three friends as they settle around Serena, joining in the hug even though he makes a big show of being reluctant to do so, because – as much as Chuck Bass ever loves – he loves them.


End file.
